ENG 2150 Gimme Shelter: the spaces we live in

Jackson Heights is currently the neighborhood I reside in and it is pretty clear to a new set of eyes, that this neighborhood has no dominant ethnicity.  Jackson Heights is a complete collage of languages, cultures, ethnicities, religions, and overall people.  You can walk the 35 blocks that is Jackson Heights and encounter little villages from around the world.  There is a predominantly Middle-Eastern area, as well as Colombian, Dominican, Mexican, Greek and African-American areas.  The biggest question is how did such a neighborhood become such diverse and cultured community.  I will be looking at the history of the neighborhood as well as look for trends that determine the cultures living in Jackson Heights.  Recently there is a wave of Asian-Americans newly residing in the community, which brings the question of what attracts different ethnicities to the neighborhood.

The area of Manhattan that I would like to write my final paper on is the Upper East Side.  The Upper East Side stretches from 59th Street to 96th Street and between Central Park and the East River.  The reason why I would like to write about the Upper East Side is because I live in the Baruch dorms which is right on the boarder of the Upper East Side.  I have experienced the area multiple times by walking around and seeing the neighborhood. As I was doing some research I have concluded that what I would like to talk about is how, in the past, the Upper East Side was thought of as an area where only wealthy white people lived.  I would also like to add how the neighborhood is now and how it has evolved over the years.  Using the sources discussed in class, I believe that I will have no problem finding the information to support my thesis.  If any of you have anything to add or mention, please do, I’m all ears.

Bushwick is beautiful. There is no doubt about it. After living in this neighborhood for almost twenty years, I have come to this subjective conclusion. Beauty can be found in her people, her history, and her current culture. In my paper, I will attempt to explore the history of this neighborhood, especially in the last 100 years. I will research and explain the past, current, and future demographic trends. I would like to look particularly at this neighborhood in terms of it’s real estate as well. Why are costs rising? What will happen to the current residents? Where are the future residents coming from? To determine where Bushwick is going, one must know where it has been.

My final paper is focused on Long Island City, Queens. Besides its convenience of getting to either Manhattan or Brooklyn quickly, I want to discuss how it became known as “cultural center of Queens.” I want to do that in a step by step format arguing that Long Island City it attracts a new generational and more modern form of art. This, in turn, defines its vibrancy and why it is such a landmark of Queens.

Although I have an idea of what argument I want to make, I don’t have firm idea of how to word it and put it into a thesis. I feel also that this idea should take more of a stance. There are plenty of information and articles tying Long Island City to art. I also want to add how it has commercially developed and attracted businesses because of its growing resident population.

Right now I am toying with plenty ideas, but have to find a way to narrow it down to a firm argument.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

When it comes to mental life, there is no more of an ultimate goal than realizing one’s own self-potential. Buddha called it the Enlightenment. Abraham Maslow called it Self-actualization. Truly, they are the same concept.

To be enlightened is to free oneself of his own self-caused immaturity. It is the liberation from negative emotions and the rebirth of mental clarity and love. In the above diagram, Maslow illustrates the path to self-actualization starting from the bottom. In order to climb to the top, one must satisfy all the lower needs on the bottom. For example, one can not satisfy his need for love if he has not satisfied his need for safety. Similarly, one can not satisfy his need for safety without first satisfying the basic physiological needs of food and water. This path is perhaps the greatest challenge of mental life. Although the climb may take anywhere from weeks to years, the achievement of self-actualization is eternally and blissfully rewarding.

The Blase Affect is quite negative. Living in the city, for instance, we are constantly exposed to obscene and offensive materials, we become apathetic towards our surroundings and thus bored. I believe this is unfortunate, especially in the city. We have so many opportunities but are blind to them because we choose to ignore them because they are just everyday factors.

The blase affect also stops us from being helpful or considerate to one another. We are constantly exposed to the homeless and we eventually become immune to their presence. This is inconsiderate and inhumane. We don’t usually think about this but as we ride the subway or walk the streets, we are in our own little world and block out those less fortunate. We turn up our iPods and ignore the begs and pleas, we are bored and irritated. We notice how obvious this is when we witness a tourist notice a homeless person on the street for the first time and concern fills their faces.

It is almost inconceivable that the blase affect actually exist and to such a degree that we would ignore helping others, unfortunately it’s true and it is severe. We all want to reject the claim that we are personally at fault for this and perhaps it is true. The blase affect can be a result of constant exposure due to where we live. New Yorkers usually get the blame fore their attitudes but because of constant exposure to the same things, who can blame us? We are a product of the environment we live in and after seeing the same things on a daily schedule, we are bound to be bored.

In the Metropolis and Mental Life, we read about the blase effect. “Life makes one blasé because it stimulates the nerves to their utmost re-activity until they finally can no longer produce any reaction at all,” (329).

In the dictionary, the definition of Blase is –  “indifferent to or bored with life; unimpressed, as or as if from an excess of worldly pleasures”.

In life we can find many examples of what can represent the blase effect.

To start of we can talk about school. There are some people who enjoy school and some who don’t  and at some point I believe that everyone gets tired. We go through the same things all the way from elementary to college. WE deal with people, come across new information, bad and good teachers, and so many other things.  After a while we can expect to become indifferent. And everything after school also, which means a job. A job has us chasing the money that we want to use to enjoy life, but soon enough envelops us because of our hunger for the best quality of life. Day after day, we work and work, until the point where we just font want to and just don’t care about the job, but only what it brings to us at the end of the week or month. This all becomes boring at some point, and when it is your turn to enjoy life, we can honestly say we feel indifferent and bored with life.

NEW YORK CITY. The place to be. The city that never sleeps. Some would even go as far as claiming it is what makes America. “the heart of United states of America. But really its nothing special to me. Ive had been to places that are much more enticing and a thousand times better than New York City. This advertisement is probably the best representation given to people outside of New york. “Times square 42nd street, the brightest city with everything you can imagine.” Well, not exactly… although this city is great it is nothing like what they show in tv advertisements or tv shows. It’s nothing like on television or the movies. Apartments are tiny unless you’re very wealthy. There is no empty couch in a coffee shop waiting for you like on the show “Friends” and no empty booths to call your own like on “How I Met Your Mother”. Most people work their tails off to survive and the odds of 4 or more friends having the free time to meet up with each other every day is ridiculous. Then there are shows like Seinfeld where the majority of the cast own cars and drive around Manhattan like it’s the suburbs. But – who would want to watch a tv show about 4 friends whose schedules conflict every day and wait on lines or stand in a a corner waiting for a table?

New York City is simply nothing like what it is shown to be. Almost like a mask over what it really is. A community that is a slave to work and time. We see money as the goal of life. Honestly to me, NYC is the epitome of greed, wealth, need and selfishness. Like Simmuel says, peoples qualitative uniqueness and irreplaceability become criteria of value, everyone is striving to be an individual in a vast city like New York City but is unlikely and almost impossible. Everyone and everything is objective and never what it seems. Although there may be bad sides to a metropolis like New York City, I also have to agree with Simmuel that this is a place of freedom for people to define themselves. It encourages individuality and intelligence, forcing out closed minded people and way of thinking.

All in all, NYC isn’t a terrible place but it never lived up to all its advertisements for me. Maybe it’s because I’ve lived here all my life or maybe it’s because I’m living in the wrong part of New York. I’m sure time management is important and universal all over the world but here in NYC, the only thing that matters is time management, you have to be on top of everything or else things won’t work out as well as you would like.

“The Metropolis and Mental Life,” by George Simmel demonstrates how urban life changes mental life. The read was a bit confusing but after hitting some of the main points in class, it may have cleared up my understanding. The transition between rural to urban life is rather substantial, where personal interactions become impersonal and where feeling and emotion turn intellectual. As discussed in class, intellectualization is when one blocks out emotion, turning to reason or logic, a way to basically remain blind to reality. The urban life is governed by the objective, where everything is fact, there is nothing personal, as opposed to the rural life, where the small town where one can be subjective, having some sort of personal interpretation or experience. Because we are so bound to the city life, and as Simmel suggested, we are more or less robotic, sustaining our subjective selves, running around like little puppets under money hungry capitalists (at least in today’s society), taking away from any individuality thats left in us.

“Life makes one blasé because it stimulates the nerves to their utmost reactivity until they finally can no longer produce any reaction at all,” (329). This is just another way of saying that things go unnoticed, that there is no indifference. This goes back to the fact that people in big cities are in fact “mathematical formulas.” You can’t change the formula because you won’t get the same output. This pertains to the individuals engulfed by the metropolis life; everything is calculated, or a better term, measurable; time is everything. We can’t do anything different than what we are used to doing, this daily robotic routine, because we need to produce money, it must be our product, we can’t change it because we need that output. It’s just all about money and time, therefore taking away any kind of value, meaning or reaction, making everything superficial.   Because we have no emotional response, or any kind of regard to something that’s out of the ordinary demonstrates there is no more qualitative value within the community, rather a move quantitative based setting, a money economy. Furthermore, Simmel says, “Money, with all its colorless and indifference quality, can become the common denominator of all values,” (330). Money is the motive, at least in the city it is.

The military and all its branches are highly advertised, so much so that we are subconsciously influenced by them. The messages and symbols they portray create the blasé effect on the individuals witnessing them by means of repetitive imaging. Through display of guns,force, power, and bravery we become desensitized to the true nature and reality that war is. War is brutal, frightening, and filled with loss. The advertisements however, exemplify the military as a prestigious and honorary role. Although this is true and the members of our military are held in high respect,the mass public subconsciously grows to support efforts of war without regarding its tragedies. We become so accustomed to the military as being a “force for good” we forget that many  detrimental things happen to our soldiers and by them. We are conditioned to believe war is “cool”. As exemplified in the photo, most individuals would say they see an “epic” or “awesome” capture of the armed forces. Few individuals would say that they see a terrifying, dangerous or sad capture despite these soldiers are in an open area susceptible to enemy fire, mines, or another type of attack. We don’t recognize the wrong that can happen instead we see these images so readily in the news, ads, television, and video games that it’s seriousness is minimized. We loose the trepidation that war should often impose because of the way it is represented in daily life. War becomes simply a game, because we are so distanced from it and it is represented solely in its lime light and hardly ever in its atrocities. Therefore we become blasé and unflappable in our views of war, it simply becomes an everyday thing.